"Yes," Flo answered, still looking at the fire; "they are very intimate. Are not those pretty tiles, Cecil?" she asked, suddenly turning her eyes on the encaustic tiles that surrounded the grate. "I chose the design myself. The architect had put a bronze stove into this room, and it was to be heated with hot-air pipes! Imagine a boudoir heated with hot-air pipes! I think when one feels particularly miserable there is nothing so consoling as a cosy fire. A soothing influence seems to creep over one as one sits in the twilight, looking into red coals. And how, in goodness' name, could one sit and stare at pipes? I suppose architects never are unhappy." This speech seemed to imply that unhappiness was not altogether a stranger to Mrs. Lobyer. But Cecil did not take any notice of the remark. When a young lady chooses to marry as Florence Crawford had married, the wisest course for her friends is to ignore the peculiarities of her lot, and to take it for granted that she is happy. "Yes," Flo said, after a pause, "Sir Nugent and Mr. Lobyer are very intimate; and there is something almost romantic in the circumstances of their friendship. They were at Eton together; they were of the same age, in the same class, and they lived in the same house; but they were the most bitter foes. There was quite a Corsican vendetta between them. Sir Nugent represented the aristocratic party, Mr. Lobyer the commercial faction. They were the Guelphs and Ghibellines of the form. Of course, under these circumstances, they were perpetually fighting, for it really seems that the chief business of Eton boys is to fight and play cricket. One day, however, they had a desperate battle in a place called Sixpenny, though why Sixpenny is more than I can tell you. The fight was going against Mr. Lobyer--for I believe Sir Nugent is enormously strong, though he looks so slender--and the backers were persuading him to take a licking--that's the Eton term, I believe, for giving in; but he wouldn't give in: and while they were wrestling, he took a knife from his trousers-pocket, and stabbed Sir Nugent in the arm. It wasn't much of a stab, I believe, but the backers informed the masters of the business, and there was a tremendous outcry about it, and Mr. Lobyer was expelled the school. Of course he was very young at the time," added Flo, rather nervously; "and I suppose boys of that age scarcely know that it is wrong to use a knife when the fight is going against them." Cecil did not answer immediately. She had never liked the gentleman whose hospitality she was enjoying, and this little episode from the history of his school-days was not calculated to improve her estimate of him. "And yet Sir Nugent and Mr. Lobyer are now quite intimate," she said presently, feeling that she was called upon to say something.